Pakistani Ahmadi Man Facing Trial For Claiming That He Was A Prophet Is Shot Dead Inside Court

A Pakistani man who was facing blasphemy charges was shot dead during a trial inside a courtroom in Peshawar.

Tahir Ahmad Naseem was shot six times during a hearing in his case at a district court on Wednesday, killing him on the spot.

AFP

The shooter, identified as Khalid Khan was arrested immediately and he reportedly told the police that Prophet Muhammad ordered him in a dream to kill this guy because he was Ahmadi.

Ahmadis are a minority sect in Pakistan which numbers some 4 million members and claim that they follow Islam.

However, Pakistan declared the group non-Muslim in 1974 for regarding their sect's founder, Ghulam Ahmad, as a prophet. Orthodox Islam holds there can be no prophets after Muhammad.

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Since then it has been declared illegal for them to claim themselves to be Muslims and have faced religious persecutions and killings.

Pakistan's first Nobel Prize winner, Mohammad Abdus Salam was awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics was largely ignored by the country, because he was an Ahmadi.

Naseem, the man who was shot dead on Wednesday was arrested in 2018 and has been in police custody ever since.

He landed in trouble for claiming that he was a prophet.

However hardline Islamists saw this as an act of blasphemy and an insult to Prophet Muhammad.

AFP

Pakistan has some of the toughest blasphemy laws in the world and an insult to Prophet Muhammad or the Quran carries the death penalty.

But, most of the blasphemy accused don't get tried or convicted as they are often killed by mobs who believe it is their religious duty to punish the blasphemer.

There are also allegations that the blasphemy laws are often used to settle personal scores, especially against religious minorities by accusing them of insulting the Prophet, often without any evidence to back it up.

But once the allegation is made, charged up mobs lynch the accused, without even giving them an opportunity to explain their side.

Though there are many such cases in Pakistan, the most high profile of them involved Asia Bibi, a Christian woman.

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In 2009, her co-workers accused Bibi of insulting Prophet Muhammad and was subsequently arrested and sentenced to death by hanging in 2010.

After languishing in jail for nearly a deceased, she was acquitted by the Supreme Court in October 2018.

Following her acquittal, Bibi left Pakistan in 2019 and now lives in Canada with her family.